New York, especially Manhattan, straddles this weird paradox where it's both mindbogglingly huge and swallows you up, and intimately navigable. Everything is simultaneously sized for titans and humans. It manages to provide awesome vistas while piling in on you. It's organized and chaotic. It can be astonishingly cheap, and hideously expensive.
There's an infinite, fractal, size and complexity to the city, while being constrained on all sides. You always know where you are, but there's a near infinity of places to be. It's both surprisingly old and cutting edge new, and it generates its own history. It's the only city I know of that looks exactly like the photos of it.
You can set out at one river, on a journey across the island, and it feels like a vast quest among the roots of a giant alien steel, stone and glass forest (with massive iron snakes coursing beneath the earth), and before you know it, you're at the other side, looking at the view of somewhere else across a river -- yet entire generations of lives have lived, loved and died without ever seeing the outside of it.
In that short walk you'll cross betwixt a population greater than most towns, encounter nearly every method man has devised to cross the earth, meet poor artists and giants of industry. It can be stunningly hot, or buried in snow and freezing depending on the weather. Rain storms can start and stop in the time it takes to read this sentence. In a few moments, you can be beneath the surface of the earth, or higher than the first aircraft dared to go, without ever taking off your jacket or adjusting your shoes.
Every building you step into captures a moment in history of good ideas and bad, a museum of thought, a classroom of fads and fashion, structure and freedom. It's like a random sample of the whole world was picked up and air dropped onto a carefully organized vessel, a Rama waiting to lift up and go forth on its journey elsewhere.
I feel dizzy reading this, the same way New York makes me dizzy with its crowds and noise and what not. I like New York, but only the New York at 4 in the morning on a weekday. Still surprisingly busy.
I will use this comment of yours (with attribution, obvs), whenever I have to talk about it. With an extra paragraph at the end:
"I don't like it".
Very poetic though-- made me go to your profile to check if you were an author, who I should know. :)
I simply love NYC, seldom felt so much energy - a lot of startups and a vibrant developer community too. IMHO San Francisco is kind of boring in comparison and the weather actually isn't that much better either ;)
One of my favorite parts of living in this (at-points) expensive, overcrowded, noisy, competitive, shallow, and brutal metropolis is the extensive walking culture that we share. My walk/bike commute to work could meander along the same main and side streets, with every one of the ~251 trips taken being uniquely constructed.
Furthermore, that ignores the wiggling route I enevitably travel, pushed left by a honking cab and similarly colored stoplight, or nudged right by the inevitable crowded side street filled with movie sets or construction vehicles.
Putting aside the health benefits of human-powered-travel, it's both a refreshing and invigorating way to spool up my mind on the way into the office, and also a way to decompress and release the day's aspirational steam that's best not blown out all at once, just inside your apartment.
The walkability of New York -- or rather the non-walkability of every other city in America -- is what keeps me here. So many other cities with nicer weather, more beautiful landscapes, but all of them depend on vehicles to varying degrees.
SF is only 7x7 miles. Completely walkable if you have good, strong hips for those 42 or so hills ;) And when you've decided to stop walking, make your way to House of Prime Rib for a hearty meal and 2000 calories...
Even during brutal weather, the subway was active - it has never let me down. Sure it is crowded, you'll have to deal with rudeness etc. But the public transit here is comprehensive and reliable. Can't say the same about other big cities in the U.S. It is also awesome to walk, especially during summer (only prob is too many tourists taking pictures all over the place blocking your way)
Sometimes when I'm stuck on a bug, I just go on a ride on my motorcycle. I'd be too afraid to ride a motorcycle in New York (lane splitting actually saves lives, and this is prohibited in NYS), but I do this around SF, Marin, and around the bay. Being on two wheels or on your feet allows you to enjoy the scene. For whatever reason, there's something about 4-wheels that doesn't allow you to do so.
But drivers in both cities still suck. The image of a cyclist being thrown into the air 10 feet on Folsom and 15th still sticks in my memory. I later learned he died. Never ever take the road for granted, even wearing Kevlar gear and a full-faced helmet; still no match for any steel framed vehicle. I'm always dumbstruck every time I peer into someone's window and I see the driver's head down, looking at a phone...
I live in Portland, OR. My city has great walk-ability, and I walk here.. a lot.
Last week, I made my first trip to NYC and, wow, did I walk. In fact, I broke a personal record by walking 14 miles within a 5 hr period around Manhattan.
When I got back to PDX, I gave my shoes a couple days of rest.
Reminds me of my first (and only) trip to NY. I somehow ended up lost walking through Brooklyn and came across a little bookstore. In there I found a book called "N walks in New York" (or similar). It was organized around a single stroll through each neighborhood in each borough, touching on elements of history, food, and typical tourist destinations. The walks would sometimes be point to point, other times a loop, but always took me through interesting streets I would never have thought of going through myself. I ended up doing these walks through every part of Manhattan, and some more in Queens. Was well worth the $15 or so I paid for it!
It won't be 3D. 3D requires the pictures to be taken from 2 different locations (one for each eye). But the panoramas were each taken from a single location.
Recommended (short) book describing NYC: Here Is New York by E.B. White.
Shameless plug: I've been here since January walking and taking photographs on the street almost every day. You can see my work so far in the Notebook section of my site at http://simongriffee.com/notebook/
If people truly love their city, let them embrace and share its greatness.
I will say there's a very distinct brutal bitter trauma I've seen from ex- New Yorkers that none the less they'll still give praise to that city. I suspect they must reassure themselves NYC is worthy of that sacrifice.
You thought that was an insightful observation? Perhaps you should also share your observations about the color of the sky (people may not know it's blue).
And if you wanted to say it's not the center of the universe, maybe you could have said that instead of calling an entire major city pretentious.
There's an infinite, fractal, size and complexity to the city, while being constrained on all sides. You always know where you are, but there's a near infinity of places to be. It's both surprisingly old and cutting edge new, and it generates its own history. It's the only city I know of that looks exactly like the photos of it.
You can set out at one river, on a journey across the island, and it feels like a vast quest among the roots of a giant alien steel, stone and glass forest (with massive iron snakes coursing beneath the earth), and before you know it, you're at the other side, looking at the view of somewhere else across a river -- yet entire generations of lives have lived, loved and died without ever seeing the outside of it.
In that short walk you'll cross betwixt a population greater than most towns, encounter nearly every method man has devised to cross the earth, meet poor artists and giants of industry. It can be stunningly hot, or buried in snow and freezing depending on the weather. Rain storms can start and stop in the time it takes to read this sentence. In a few moments, you can be beneath the surface of the earth, or higher than the first aircraft dared to go, without ever taking off your jacket or adjusting your shoes.
Every building you step into captures a moment in history of good ideas and bad, a museum of thought, a classroom of fads and fashion, structure and freedom. It's like a random sample of the whole world was picked up and air dropped onto a carefully organized vessel, a Rama waiting to lift up and go forth on its journey elsewhere.